LIKE ALL PROPER banana republics, the Olive Republic of Greece has
jailed some elected members of parliament, charging them with
criminality, as obscure and vague an accusation as hooliganism used to
be when Uncle Joe Stalin was displeased with some Russian writer. Stalin
used dissidents for target practice; the present gang in power in the
birthplace of selective democracy simply sticks them in jail. The last
people to do this were the so-called abominable colonels, back in 1967,
and I say so-called because, when they pulled their coup off on April
21, 1967, a majority of Greeks cheered.

Mind you, not the media, nor the bien pensant among the liberal
elite in Europe and inside the Beltway. (You know the type: Ugly,
feminine, intense, dandruffy, bad teeth, and always prattling about
civil liberties and human rights, which in my book are licenses to
oppress the law-abiding and allow criminal behavior by minorities.) The
colonels did eventually screw it all up, in fact very badly, but they
didn't steal and were never given a chance by the rest of Europe.
President Nixon was among the few who saw the colonels as they were:
pro-West, very Christian, patriotic, honest, and not at all
sophisticated. Most of them died in prison, locked up for crimes they
didn't commit.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE POINT of my story: The colonels were given
life sentences for overthrowing a democratic system--which was not as
democratic as it sounded, but more or less a game of musical chairs
among the well connected. The present government in the Olive Republic
comprises two parties, New Democracy and Pasok. These two parties have
held power via musical chairs ever since their inception following the
fall of the colonels in July 1974. Both have stolen billions from E.U.
funds meant to be invested in the country's infrastructure.
Instead, they used the funds to place their own in civil sinecure jobs
for life, in many cases two or three jobs simultaneously. One in every
three Greeks is a civil servant, making up the middle class that has
emerged over the last 40 years. These same crooks now order six members
of parliament arrested and jailed without bothering to lift their
parliamentary immunity (as of this writing) and call the arrested MPs a
threat to democracy. (Kafka, where are you now that we need you in good
old Hellas?)

So the colonels overthrew a minority party ruling by royal fiat and
got life sentences as a result. The ruling crooks today are sending
elected officials to jail without proof because Golden Dawn is unpopular
with the bien pensant and the media the world over. Golden Dawn members,
to be sure, would not exactly be welcome in the drawing room of, say,
Consuelo Vanderbilt, but what you see is what you get. They are poor,
have never had a slice of the pie that has been so generously divided
between the faithful of the two parties, are regular churchgoers and
very patriotic. They are anti-European Union because they know it is
just another con by which bureaucrats in Brussels run the lives of
Greeks from the comfort of their plush offices. The media have labeled
the Golden Dawn as violent neo-Nazi thugs and fascists, whatever that
means. And Golden Dawn members are anti-immigrant. (More than ten
percent of the Greek population is from Africa and subsists off the
state.) That is it. Golden Dawn's closest ideological allies are
those of Marine Le Pen's National Front in France. Basically, what
is needed is for Athens to clean up the corruption and crony capitalism
that have been at the root of the country's problems. This is not
being done, no matter what the present government says in order to keep
the E.U. vultures coming up with the billions needed to pay the
nation's debts. The last five years have seen austerity measures
imposed by Brussels that have hurt mostly the poor. Just to show the
extent of the government's lies, Greece got into trouble by owing
120 percent of her GDP back in 2008, and after five years she now owes
170 percent of her GDP. The government calls that an improvement.
(Again, where is Kafka?)

SUCH SHENANIGANS are nothing new for Greeks. The public has always
been deprived of real information, as television, newspapers, and news
sites are controlled by the economic and political elite. The latest
news I've had from my birthplace is a campaign by the left against
yours truly, naming me as a big financial supporter of Golden Dawn, a
party I have never given a penny to. Mind you, using the yellowest press
in Europe against an individual is also nothing new. Once upon a time,
30 years ago, I was described as a tool of the CIA maligning my
birthplace and the anti-Americanism that was then prevalent among
Greeks. Now I'm financing thugs against the ruling elite. It's
par for the course. The Greek people should demand an end to deception
and corruption. Instead, journalists are looking for scapegoats and
killing the messengers.

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